Flynn case helps president reframe Russia probe

WASHINGTON — When Michael Flynn was forced from the White House, Vice President Mike Pence said he was disappointed the national security adviser had misled him about his talks with the Russian ambassador. President Trump called the deception unacceptable.

Now Pence says he’d be happy to see Flynn back in the administration, calling him a “patriot,” as Trump pronounces him exonerated.

What a difference three years makes. The Justice Department’s move to dismiss the criminal case against Flynn marks another step in his transformation, in the eyes of Trump and his allies, from rogue adviser to victim of runaway law enforcement.

The dismissal rewrites the narrative of the case that Trump’s own Justice Department had advanced for the last three years in a way that former law enforcement officials say downplays the legitimate national security concerns they believe Flynn posed and the consequences of the lies he pleaded guilty to telling. It’s been swept up in a broader push by Trump and his Republican allies to reframe the Russia investigation as a “deep state” plot to sabotage his administration, setting the stage for a fresh onslaught of electionyear attacks on past and present Democratic officials and law enforcement leaders.

“His goal is that by the end of this, you’re just not really sure what happened and at some gut level enough Americans say, ‘It’s kind of messy,’ ” said Princeton University historian Julian Zelizer.

Scrambling to manage the coronavirus and economic crash, Trump has been eager to shift the focus elsewhere. He has repeatedly called Flynn

“exonerated” and pushed the development as evidence of what he deemed “Obamagate,” an allegation the previous administration tried to undermine him during the presidential transition.

The hope is to revive some of the prepandemic arguments to cast Trump as the political outsider being attacked by the establishment.